Several months ago, while he was sharing progress on his new work, Andre Razo held out his right arm and stuck my finger in the soft spot just below where the inner bicep connects to the elbow joint.

“Can you feel that? Feel the muscle spasming?” he said, concerned but laughing. He was wondering if it was permanent.

Andre had been working for hours that day, for himself and also to prepare for his show with David Aron in Leo Fitzpatrick’s Viewing Room at Marlborough Chelsea, making what he calls, “drawings of paintings.” His work is process and labor intensive, both highly structured and completely unplanned; he marks out a grid and then sees what happens. His work is incredibly dense, 2D but with layers that pop out against each other, with all the pleasure of a Magic Eye and only a little of the pain. At the opening of the show, it was common to see people step up to the pieces, and then step a lot closer.

Andre and David met in the mid-90s on the street. They would hang out every afternoon, skateboarding and figuring out what everyone was doing that night, drinking 40s of Budweiser outside the bars because they couldn’t afford to drink inside. Leo solicited David and Andre for the Viewing Room show both because of their relationship and the relationship between their work over time. David’s work is a mixture of assemblage, sculpture, and painting, with stand-out colors and use of white as other than placeholder. Both Andre and David’s work share a way of dealing with space and dimension, with layers overlapping, going over and under, flatness with a sense of varying depths. Both share an element of design and relationship.

Andre developed his current style six years ago after he moved and also let go of his studio, moving away from painting and making his works of marker on paper. Not wanting to turn his new home into a paint studio, his allowed his work to find freedom in the constraint. Still attracted to and exploring how limitless the interpretation of abstraction is, the work developed a new language with a clear dialogue of what is happening in process. The work stays organic in structural confines, overcoming it to finding peace and balance in the grid. An element of play winds through every piece, most evident in his new sculptural work, “County Line,” of painted rocks on colored sand in a painted square, pet rocks from various firing surf spots, lazy travels, and picked up on walks with friends during all hours of day and night. An intimate epitome of the drawing process, “County Line,” is a unit of a grid containing organic and human elements and their relationship to each other.

After a few years of development the first showing of the work was a two man show at Fuse Gallery in 2013, “Composite Transfigurations,” with Brian DeRan, then a piece in a group show at Slow Culture in LA the following year, “High Math.”

Andre still insists that he isn't an artist by his definition and says, “I just make things.” We put Andre to a slightly updated version of the Proust Questionnaire, French philosopher Marcel Proust’s psychological party game.

1. What is your current state of mind?

Open to everything but scattered as per usual

2. What kind of projects are you currently working on?

Making drawings and music. Cleaning up my backyard.

3. What music do you listen to while working?

Eclectic Playlists with lots of folk, soul and shoe gaze

4. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Being with friends and family

5. What is your greatest fear?

Not being ready

6. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Fear

7. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Braggadocio

8. Which living person do you most admire?

Leonard Cohen

9. Whose style, if any, do you most admire?

Bob Dylan

10. Describe a new development you would love to see in the future.

Acceptance and celebration of differences

11. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Omnipotence

12. What is one thing most people don’t know about you?

I’m half Filipino

13. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

I say “it’s like” too much

14. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Family and friends

15. When and where were you happiest?

Marriage

16. Which talent would you most like to have?

Spanish Guitar chops

17. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I’d quit smoking

18. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Falling in love

19. Preferred Social Media?

Instagram

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?